Mother claims her daughter almost abducted

A local mother wants parents to beware after a stranger tried to abduct her 12-year-old daughter while the two were shopping Tuesday night at Three Star Mall.

Meanwhile, police are continuing to look into the reported incident but say they have not found anyone at the mall who saw the incident or the alleged perpetrator.

?She?s still scared to death,? said the local mother who wished not to be identified. ?I just want to make sure other parents know about this so they can keep a lookout.?

The incident in question, the mother said, occurred Tuesday evening around 7 p.m. while the mother and daughter were shopping in separate stores. According to the mother, while she was shopping in Goody?s her daughter stepped out of Radio Shack and was looking at items in a kiosk when the mysterious man approached the girl.

?He was an older man with gray hair and wasn?t very tall because my daughter said he wasn?t much taller than she was,? the mother said. ?She said he came up and started asking her questions and then asked her if he could kiss her.?

The mother said the man, who was wearing a red-checkered shirt, then grabbed her daughter?s arm and began pulling her toward the old Kmart location. The girl pulled free and took off running. The man briefly pursued her, then disappeared as the girl dashed into a store and used a phone to call her mother?s cellphone. The man was nowhere to be found when security was called.

?I?d want other parents to tell me if something like this happened to their child,? the mother said of going public with the incident.

Police say they conducted a thorough search of the area and questioned people working in businesses near where the incident occurred, but no one reported hearing or seeing anything unusual, leaving lawmen no leads as far as determining the identity of the alleged assailant. A security guard was also on duty at the mall at the time and reported seeing no one fitting the man?s description.